


The Middle of Nowhere

by weakinteraction



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Cross-cultural, Dubious Consent, Engineers, Fuck Or Die, M/M, Sex in a confined space, Star Trek Reverse Big Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-03-09 17:05:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18921337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: Chief Engineer's Log, Stardate 45782.4.  Our long journey to our next assignment at FGC 47, through the nearly empty region between two spiral arms of the galaxy, is the perfect opportunity to try out some of the new theories we've come up with about modulating warp field geometry.  While we've taken inspiration from the new Intrepid class designs, I think we can show the guys back at Utopia Planitia that even a ship with fixed nacelle pylons can achieve some significant improvements in both speed and efficiency.Head of Engineering Log, 3rd of Quintilis, Imperial Year 1623.  Our assignment to shadow the Federation flagship as it traverses unclaimed territory close to the border necessitates prolonged use of the cloaking device.  I have assured Commander Tomalak that, despite the minor unexplained system failures we have experienced, our vessel and my crew are more than ready to meet this challenge.





	1. Initial Value Problem

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Star Trek Reverse Big Bang 2019, inspired by [this fantastic piece of art](https://startrekreversebang.dreamwidth.org/file/24668.jpg) by Grandioso.
> 
> Set in Season 5, between The Perfect Mate and Imaginary Friend.

Geordi had started tonight's poker game feeling as though his luck couldn't be any worse than it had been during the day -- they had run through three different modulations of the warp field over the course of the day, but the data was inconclusive at best as to whether they had made any difference at all -- but he had quickly discovered that things could indeed go even further downhill for him. It wasn't even that he was drawing bad hands, simply that someone else had always had a better one.

This time was no different. He'd shown his three queens, but Data had a full house -- fives over twos.

Deanna smiled sympathetically as she scooped up the cards and started to shuffle. "The emptiness is getting to all of us, I think," Deanna said. She glanced at Data, carefully stacking the chips he had just scooped up. "Well, not quite all, perhaps."

"Really?"

"Do you remember last year? The rift?" Geordi knew that the memories were painful for her, so if she was bringing it up it was for a good reason.

"We're not--" Geordi stopped himself from rattling off a dozen technical reasons why the gulf between the stars differed from a Tyken's Rift; Deanna would already be well aware of all of them. "This isn't the same."

"Perhaps not," Deanna said. "But it's not completely different, either."

Beverly said, "It's a long way but at least we're getting back to Starfleet's core mission. I think FGC 47 is fascinating, and I'm not even an astrophysicist."

"The composition of the nebula is highly anomalous," Data agreed. "Its metallicity is more comparable to that of a pristine nebula than the result of a supernova explosion, which should be enriched with heavy elements such as--"

"And you're getting to do your warp tests," Beverly said before Data could list off half the Periodic Table.

"I guess," Geordi said. "I just wish they were going better. Still, we'll be ready to try the quaternion-Mandelbrot configuration tomorrow, I think. That one was very promising in the simulations."

"I have reviewed your schematics," Data said. "I believe that if the principle is sound, we may achieve a 2.4% increase in warp engine efficiency."

"Well, you know, don't get too excited, Data."

"Excitement is an emotion," Data said, looking puzzled, as he often did in such conversations -- Geordi had given up asking him why that didn't count as an emotion. "I do not experience excitement as you would understand it."

"Five card stud," Deanna said. "No wilds. Let's keep this nice and simple."

Once she'd dealt, Geordi looked at his hole card -- an ace. Now he would just have to wait to find out how it would turn out that would turn out to be no use to him whatsoever.

* * *

"Computer, analyse the results of the latest warp field test."

This was the configuration that they'd all been particularly excited about, back when they were planning this sequence of tests; if they were right about the way the fractal edges of the warp field they were projecting would improve traction against the deeper subspace layers, then the Enterprise ought to be able to cruise at high warp indefinitely in the future.

After the last few days, though, Geordi felt almost certain that the results would be negative.

"Warp engine efficiency decreased by 1.2% compared to baseline standard," the computer voice said, with its usual preternatural calm.

"Oh, come _on_ ," Geordi said.

He could almost feel the heads of the rest of the Engineering crew on shift turn in his direction, but no one said anything. Not straight away, at least.

It was Ensign Sutter who came over in the end from the gaggle of people working by the warp core. "Chief?"

"Yes?" Geordi said warily. If they were going to stage an intervention, tell him he was working too hard and needed to rest, they'd surely have sent someone who'd been on board longer. Gomez, perhaps, or Lefler, come to recite one of her little truisms at him -- what did she call them? Rules? Laws?

Sutter said, "I was wondering -- are we sure that the baseline standards are accurate?"

"Of course we are," Geordi said. "We run those tests every quarter, against the spec _and_ against my own benchmark suite."

"I know, Commander, but ..."

"But?"

"Maybe the Enterprise is working below spec," Sutter said, the words coming out in a tumble as though admitting that the thought had even crossed his mind was tantamount to blasphemy.

Geordi was about to respond exactly the way Sutter was probably imagining he would, until he caught the elevated infrared emissions from the cheeks of the others, stood around the main desk but still well within earshot. They had clearly sent Sutter over to broach the subject because they'd all been discussing it previously. "Any of you want to weigh in?" he said, deliberately loudly.

Gomez stepped forward. "He's right, sir. This isn't the only thing that's been working suboptimally. This morning the replicator in my quarters-- I mean, we all know I have terrible luck with replicators, but even notwithstanding that-- the thing is, my breakfast was cold and ... plasticky."

"But we've checked the systems," Sutter said. "It's not those asteroid parasites. We definitely got rid of all of those."

"We've had three EPS conduit failures in the last 48 hours," Lefler put in. "Nothing major, we've been able to re-route, but ..."

Geordi sighed. "OK, OK, let's run a Level Two diagnostic. And then we'll rerun the warp performance benchmarks with the standard field geometry."

* * *

Hours of painstaking but ultimately frustrating work later, Geordi was standing in front of the screen in the conference room, presenting their initial findings to the senior staff. He could feel the attention of all the others on him, the Captain most of all. It was good to know that Data was already up to speed -- as soon as the diagnostics had begun to show multiple anomalies, he'd called him down to Engineering.

He didn't mind reporting that there was something wrong with the ship -- he had always felt that "honesty is the best policy" applied to Chief Engineers more than most. And nor did he mind admitting when he didn't understand something -- creative, collaborative problem solving was his favourite part of the job. But the two taken together, when you were a long way from the nearest Starbase, were never going to be good news.

"You're certain?" Captain Picard said eventually.

"The Enterprise's performance is degrading," Geordi said. "We're a long way from the point where it will cause us major problems, but if it continues an increasing amount of my staff's time is going to have to be spent on running repairs."

"Could the process accelerate?" Riker asked.

"Since we don't understand the cause of it, we can't rule that out," Geordi said.

"Could it be deliberate sabotage?" Worf asked. "A computer virus or some similar mechanism?" Geordi suppressed a smile when, in response to the stares he was receiving, Worf growled, "We _are_ close to territory claimed by the Romulans."

"Again, we can't rule it out," Geordi said. "Though it would have to be a _very_ sophisticated virus not to have been picked up during the diagnostic process. But, if you want my honest opinion, it seems too random for that."

"Do we need to turn back to Starbase 117?" Picard asked. "The mission to FGC 47 is not time-critical."

Geordi knew that that wasn't the whole truth, though. If they didn't make it to FGC 47, something else would come up demanding the Enterprise's attention, and the task would be added to the long list of assignments of some long range science vessel quite possibly still under construction at Utopia Planitia. Geordi knew that there were many on the crew -- Data chief among them, though of course he would never describe it in emotional terms -- champing at the bit to study the nebula there for themselves, as Beverly had alluded to at poker the other night. Were those considerations affecting his judgement? He didn't think so, even though he knew that returning to the Starbase would be the safer option. "We can handle it under a range of likely scenarios," he said. "I'll let you know if my assessment changes."

"Very well," Picard said. "Continue investigating the cause and making whatever repairs are necessary."

"Captain," Data said.

"Yes, Data?"

"We have not yet run a Level One diagnostic on ship's systems. That may be advisable at this time."

"We didn't want to disrupt the operation of the entire ship," Geordi said. "Especially when we didn't even know if anything was wrong."

"If it's necessary, do it," Picard said. He smiled as he said, "Just make sure she's going to start working again afterwards, eh?"

Geordi nodded, and returned to his seat as the briefing moved on to other matters. The crew evaluation cycle was shifting back into high gear; he was supposed to submit reports on the performance of everyone under his command within the next week. He knew that Troi and Riker would be forgiving if his were a little late, but it still wasn't ideal timing; on the other hand, if his crew worked as well as they had done today as they tried to fix things, he'd have plenty of positive things to say.

He stayed behind at the end as the others filed out, contemplating what would come next. With luck, the Level One diagnostic would reveal something that the Level Two hadn't. Then they'd be able to fix things and be on their way. But Geordi had been in enough strange situations by now to trust his gut instinct that it probably wouldn't turn out to be that simple.

It took him a while to realise that Deanna had stayed behind too.

"You don't need to worry, Geordi," she said once she knew she had his attention. "The evaluations can wait."

Geordi smiled. "That wasn't the only thing I was thinking about."

"I know," she said. "You don't need to worry about anything else either." She put her hand on his shoulder. "You'll figure it out. And then you can get back to your warp tests."

Geordi laughed. "I'm still convinced you can get just as much geometrical variation without any fancy variable nacelles ..."

* * *

Geordi decided to let everyone -- himself included -- get a shift's sleep before commencing the Level One diagnostic.

Predictably enough, Data was waiting in Engineering in the morning, having spent all night on a range of other tests.

"You find anything?" Geordi asked.

"I am afraid not," Data said. "Indirect measurements of the dilithium chamber suggest that the crystal structure is displaying more stress than would usually be expected, although still within operating parameters. We have also observed a number of sensor glitches over the past nine and a half hours."

"Oh?"

Data brought up a display, and scrolled quickly through the log. "Subspace echoes of the ship itself have appeared on three occasions. There have also been five spurious detections of tetryon particles, and a number of distortions to images of distant stars obtained by stellar cartography."

"Thanks, Data," Geordi said. "And the rest of you," he added, seeing that gamma shift were beginning to leave as alpha shift returned to their posts. "All right, everyone," he said, "let's get ready." Once they were all at their stations, he tapped his combadge and said, "La Forge to Bridge. We're ready to begin the Level One diagnostic."

"Acknowledged," said Riker.

A few moments later, they came out of warp: the subtle shift in the vibrations of the ship coming just a moment before the warp core entered its resting state, the pulses of matter and antimatter slowing considerably until they were providing just enough power to keep the ship's systems ticking over. Soon, though, they would halt it completely, and the ship would have to rely on its backup power systems. Once the core was checked over, they would reinitialise it and those systems themselves would be taken offline. Bit by bit, the entire ship would be thoroughly checked over.

Whatever was going on, Geordi was determined that they would find it.

* * *

Geordi always felt at home inside the Jefferies tubes, even though he was almost always there to sort out some sort of problem.

"This EPS conduit is one of the ones that failed," he told Data. "But now there's _nothing_ wrong with it." The synchrotron radiation from a leaking conduit was usually like a bright flare as far as his VISOR was concerned, but there was nothing of the kind here; and all the other diagnostic tests confirmed it.

"It is very strange," Data said. "Some sort of ... transient error."

"Data, are you being affected by these sorts of issues?"

"I do not believe so, on any significant level," Data said. "The self-repair and error-checking routines that Dr Soong gave me are considerably more advanced than those of the Enterprise's systems. Since we became aware of the degradation of the Enterprise, I have noticed that these routines are detecting slightly higher failure rates among some of my own components, but they are more than capable of handling it at the present rate."

"That's good to hear, Data," Geordi said. "I wouldn't want you to--"

Suddenly, the ship rocked, exactly as though it had taken fire. With his android reflexes, Data reached out to stop Geordi crashing awkwardly into the side of the Tube.

"All hands, Red Alert," the Captain's voice came over the general comm. The conduit began pulsing with significantly increased power; the ship entering Red Alert status would have automatically overridden all the diagnostic protocols. "A Romulan warbird has decloaked dead ahead."


	2. Change of Variables

As Data walked briskly from the turbolift to Ops, Geordi headed straight for the Engineering station, which had already configured itself for battle, prioritising displaying damage control reports and the status of shields and weapons systems.

"Shields holding," Worf said. "85%."

"Any response to our hails?" the Captain said.

"None whatsoever," Worf said. Geordi could tell from his tone that he didn't consider this to be a problem; that, if anything, he now considered his sabotage theory to have been correct. The random nature of the systems failure didn't matter if the intention had been to provoke the Enterprise into making itself vulnerable by running a Level One diagnostic, after which the Warbird which had been following them could decloak--

Even in the midst of the tense situation, Geordi had a moment of elation as the epiphany hit him, the information rearranging itself in his mind into a new configuration that made just as much sense.

"Captain," he said. "I believe the Romulans may have been having the exact same issues as us. _They_ probably think _we're_ responsible."

"Explain," Picard said tersely.

"We picked up some odd sensor readings that we attributed to glitches in the system," Geordi went on. "But they could equally well have come from a cloaking device operating with the same sort of degradation that we've been seeing."

Data turned around in the seat he had only just taken over occupying. "Geordi is correct, Captain. A malfunctioning cloaking device could cause a leak of tetryon particles, and the aberrations in stellar imaging could be down to gravitational microlensing if the signature of the quantum singularity was not properly suppressed."

The lights dimmed for a moment as the Romulans fired again. "Shields still holding," Worf said. "78%." He frowned as he added, "The disruptors of a D'deridex class vessel _would_ be more effective in penetrating our shields if they were operating at full efficiency."

"Re-open the hailing frequency," Picard said. When Worf nodded that he had done so, he went on, "Romulan vessel, this is Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation Starship Enterprise. We believe that you may be experiencing a cascade of low level systems failures. Please be assured that this is not of our doing. Indeed, we have encountered the same problems ourselves."

Suddenly, the display on the viewscreen switched: they had got the attention of the Romulan Commander. And he wasn't just any Romulan Commander.

"Tomalak," the Captain said icily. "A pleasure, as always."

"Captain Picard," Tomalak said. "Let me assure you now that your Starfleet deceptions will not be effective."

"I assure you, we are being completely forthright," Picard said. "Your own sensor readings must tell you as much."

"Any damage we can detect aboard your vessel could well be the result of the effectiveness of our weaponry," Tomalak said.

"You only attacked us once we had dropped out of warp; our reason for doing so was in order to allow us to perform a Level One diagnostic of the ship's systems."

"Or possibly your entropic weapon is most effective in normal space. For all we knew, you were preparing to deploy it fully, and cripple us entirely."

"I assure you, we had no knowledge whatsoever of your presence," Picard said. "Nor is there any reason for you to be present," he went on. "Our mission is purely scientific in nature."

"Ah, yes," Tomalak said. "A scientific mission to what is almost literally the middle of nowhere, except that it borders on Romulan space. Do go on; I'm sure your attempted explanation will be very entertaining."

As they continued to exchange barbs, Geordi found himself focusing more and more on what Tomalak had said, the "entropic weapon" he believed the Enterprise possessed. He reconfigured the Engineering station to allow him to analyse the results from both yesterday's Level Two diagnostic and what they had found in the Level One sweep before the Romulans had attacked. They were consistent with the idea that something was interfering with the thermodynamic arrow of time.

He tuned back into the conversation properly as it seemed to be reaching a conclusion. "Very well," Tomalak was saying. "Prepare to receive us imminently."

The viewscreen went dead.

"Well," Captain Picard said. "I think we'll chalk that one up as a victory for diplomacy. But only in injury time."

* * *

It was a tight squeeze in the turbolift with most of the senior staff crammed inside. Especially given the room that was being taken up by Worf's barely suppressed temper.

"We should not be allowing Romulans access to the ship," he was saying. "The boost to their intelligence about the Galaxy class design, and Starfleet operations in general, would be incalculable."

"We can't trust them," Geordi said. "With everything that's happened in the last year, not least trying to foment civil war amongst the Klingons ..." One of their opening gambits in that little power play had been turning Geordi himself into an unwitting assassin. He still had nightmares, occasionally.

"I appreciate your unease, gentlemen," the Captain said. "Indeed, I share it." It was only then that Geordi remembered that Captain Picard had had his own experiences only a few months ago, undercover on Romulus itself with Ambassador Spock. That mission that had ended very badly, although no matter how often Geordi had asked, Data had refused to be drawn on the exact nature of what had happened there. "If there were a neutral venue available to us, I would be much happier. But we are several parsecs away from even the nearest rogue asteroid. And besides, it's not as though they are going to invite us on board."

"That is because they are wise enough to understand secrecy," Worf said.

"Careful, Worf, anyone might think you were complimenting them," Riker said, trying to defuse the tension.

"Only a _qoH_ fails to recognise the cunning of his enemies," Worf said.

"I'll ensure your objections -- your _strenuous_ objections -- are noted in my log," the Captain said.

The turbolift deposited them only a short walk from Transporter Room Three. When they got there, Chief O'Brien looked just as unhappy with the situation as Worf had been. But he said, "The Warbird reports they're ready to transport," he said. "Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd hear myself say."

Captain Picard cleared his throat. "I don't need to tell you to be on your guard around the Romulans. But I also want you to be ... civil. Perhaps nothing will come of this limited attempt at co-operation to solve our mutual problem. But, if it does, it could be the start of a more open arrangement more widely between our peoples. We are, always, the representatives of the United Federation of Planets."

No one said anything for a moment, that stretched into an uncomfortable silence. Eventually, Geordi said, on behalf of all of them, "Understood, Captain."

Picard nodded. "Energise."

Geordi took the few moments as the annular confinement beam dispersed to compose his face. He was determined not to show any evidence of emotion.

Tomalak stepped confidently off the transporter pad. "Captain Picard, it is indeed a pleasure to see you in the flesh after all this time." He extended his hand. "This is the human tradition, is it not?"

The captain shook Tomalak's hand, just the right side of "too firmly". Geordi suppressed the smile he could feel about to form on his face.

Tomalak gestured to his two subordinates. "My Chief of Security, Subcommander Toras, and my Chief Engineer, Centurion Nevek."

Toras was a thin woman with a sharp look in her eyes. Nevek was slightly stockier, though not to the same extent as Tomalak, and his sharply tapered eyebrows were quirked upwards in a way that, on someone he knew better, Geordi would have interpreted as wry amusement at the bizarre situation he found himself in.

Captain Picard began making introductions, treating the whole business as matter-of-factly as he could. As soon as Geordi had been identified as the Enterprise's Engineer, he found that Nevek attached himself to him, asking questions even before they made it out of the transporter room. "Is it true that your vessel can sustain Warp 9.8 for several hours?"

Geordi thought back to the few occasions when an emergency had been so dire that they'd pushed the engines that far. The memory of the Borg crisis, still less than two years ago, were painful. He consoled himself with the now postponed hope that his new warp field geometry would make it possible indefinitely. Out loud, though, he said, "She certainly can."

He could see that Toras was taking much the same approach with Worf, though Worf was doing a better job of simply ignoring her than Geordi was managing.

As they filed out of the transporter room, Geordi found himself and Nevek at the back of the queue. Miles shot him a sympathetic look as the door finally slid shut behind them.

"Interesting," Nevek said, as he looked up and down the corridor. "Are these hallways made this wide so as to allow you to march in full drill?"

The beginning of a laugh escaped Geordi, but he stamped down on it. "We just like things to be roomy, given the choice," he said.

Nevek nodded, unconvinced.

The straggly procession reached the door of the holodeck. One of the few concessions Worf had managed to extract from the Captain was that the discussion with the Romulans would not take place in the real conference room. So they stepped through into a near-perfect recreation; Geordi had, at Worf's request, deliberately degraded the holodeck's performance in a few subtle, but key, areas.

"Ah yes, the famous holodeck," Tomalak said. The chair at the head of the table glitched for a moment as he sat in it. "I believe only the Ferengi are more skilled in this area. Though, of course, they use it for ... other purposes."

"We have projection technology, of course," Nevek said as he sat down next to Geordi. "But we don't put it to such frivolous uses." Geordi wasn't sure if he meant the Ferengis' or the Federation's.

Captain Picard took a seat at the other end of the table; the Enterprise command staff, who outnumbered the Romulans more than two-to-one, subtly shifted around so that where he was sat simply became the new head of the table by default. "These circumstances are highly unusual, but I hope auspicious. A Romulan delegation on board a Federation starship." He looked around the table, fixing his own crew with his gaze just as firmly as the Romulans. "But so too would appear to be the circumstances in which we find ourselves. I believe that we will have to work together to resolve things. But I also believe that if we can once demonstrate the capacity to work together, it could be the beginning of an historic change in the relationships between our two people."

"Out here in the lonely wastes between the stars, we are all diplomats," Tomalak said. He smiled. "As well as scientists, of course. And warriors, when the need arises."

Geordi didn't need Deanna's empathic powers to know that Worf wanted to add "And spies".

"So you are willing to believe that we are indeed on a scientific mission?" Picard said.

"Let us say that I am entertaining the hypothesis," Tomalak said. "In a speculative way."

"And your reason for being here?" Picard challenged.

"I believe we have been quite open about that," Tomalak said. "You are only just outside the borders of the Romulan Star Empire."

"Sector 11523 is disputed territory," Riker put in. "Our avoiding travelling through it was ... a courtesy, not an acknowledgement of the Empire's claim."

"Wherever you draw the border, you are close to it," Tomalak said airily. "And so our mission is the same as it always is: to ensure the security of the Empire."

"Enough of this," said Picard. "Let's begin. I appreciate that both sides will be cautious about sharing detailed technical information, but it seems that both our vessels are being affected by some sort of external force, and we are not going to make any progress in dealing with it unless we are willing to share _something_."

Toras looked as though she was about to object, but Tomalak quelled with a look. "Very well," he said. "Nevek, make your report."

Nevek stood up and coughed nervously. Just for a moment, Geordi felt a sense of comradeship with him: one moment in his engine room, the next unexpectedly thrust into a meeting with centuries-old rivals. "We have been experiencing system failures throughout the last seven days; our engineering logs show that they have been occurring at a roughly constant rate, after an initial rise. And ... ah ... we have been maintaining a roughly equal distance from the Enterprise during that time. That is what led us to the hypothesis that the Enterprise was the source." He glanced at Toras and Tomalak, seemingly uncertain whether he had shared too much about their thinking.

"Trawling back through the logs is a good idea," Geordi said, making a point of addressing Nevek even though his instinct was to direct his comments to the captain. "We should do that. But I don't think we'd find a constant rate. And with all the data from the warp tests, it should be easy to pinpoint where things went wrong. We'd been assuming that the poor performance we'd seen was just that we hadn't found the right configuration yet, but if we take the projections as a baseline--"

"Warp tests?" Nevek said with interest, and Geordi realised he might have said too much.

Data came to the rescue, though, as ever, Geordi couldn't tell whether he was doing so intentionally or not. "If the Romulans are willing to share their data with us," he told Picard, "we may be able to begin to map out the volume of the effect. Especially if we can access their data during the time they were intercepting us, rather than shadowing us."

"Commander?" Picard said.

"Very well," Tomalak said. "Nevek, share your data. But _only_ as much as is strictly necessary for this task."

"I'll have to establish a secure communications relay with the Terix," Nevek said. "The download will be extensive."

Worf and Toras looked equally alarmed at the prospect of a high-bandwidth interlink between the ships, and both started to protest.

Picard nodded. "Mr. Worf, I want you to personally supervise the establishment of the relay, and ensure that a member of security staff is present at all times when it is in operation."

Tomalak added, "Toras, you will shadow this work and ensure that there is no Starfleet trickery involved."

Toras gave a thin smile. "Of course, Commander."

* * *

Once most of the others had left -- Picard insisting on escorting Tomalak personally back to the transporter room -- Geordi reconfigured the holodeck to be a working lab space, with screens and consoles around the walls and a large circular bench with workstations embedded into it.

While Toras seemed a little nonplussed by the abrupt transition of the room dissolving and reforming around her, Nevek took one look at the new configuration and selected a seat. He hailed the warbird and began speaking to what seemed to be his second-in-command about the exact parameters of the interlink.

Worf drew Geordi aside. "Commander, are we certain that this is wise?"

"I don't think any of us are," Geordi said. "But it's the captain's orders."

"Indeed," Worf said. "We must trust his judgement. However, I am uneasy about the sheer volume of data relating to the configuration of the warp drive contained in the data we are sharing."

Geordi sighed. "Worf, the honest truth is, the design of the Enterprise's warp engine is ... just not a secret any more. It's old technology. There's very little difference in the basic principles between our warp core and the one on board the original Enterprise, a hundred years ago. Heck, even two hundred years ago, on the old United Earth Enterprise, the basic principles were the same."

"Your tests, however," Worf said, "are designed to try to use this 'old technology'--"

"You know what, let's say 'tried and tested'," Geordi said, already regretting his choice of words.

Worf gave an amused harrumph. "This _tried and tested_ technology to mimic the effects of engine designs that most certainly are new," he went on. "And therefore classified."

"OK, OK," Geordi said. "We'll just say the tests were to try to improve efficiency. Is that all right? And you know, it's not as if they worked."

Worf nodded reluctantly.

"And, if nothing else, sharing this data should convince them that we're being affected too. They seem convinced that we're testing some secret new weapon."

"That," said Worf with feeling, "is because they assume that everyone is like them: without honour."

Toras came over to them. "The upload is beginning," she said. "Against my better judgement, I assure you."

Nevek stepped up. "We're only going to get anywhere with this is if we do a full cross-correlation of our flight paths," he said.

"And are we certain that the Enterprise does not possess some ... what did you call it? Entropic weapon?"

"No," Nevek said simply.

"We don't, though," Geordi said. "How would that even work?"

"By Federation trickery," Toras said simply.

"We hypothesised that you had some way of decoupling the thermodynamic arrow of time from the cosmological arrow of time," Nevek said. "Or perhaps using localised warp fields to accelerate both."

"Nevek!" Toras said. "This is beyond the bounds of what Commander Tomalak agreed could be shared."

"I am only sharing our speculation," Nevek said. "If they have the weapon, then they already understand its operating principles. And if they don't, then our mutual adversary does."

"We don't even know if it is a weapon," Geordi said. "It could be some sort of natural effect."

"It is an interesting idea," Data said. "But I assure you, no one in the Federation has published anything in this field since Kosinski five years ago. And his theories were later proven to be based on some faulty assumptions."

"Well, actually--" Geordi stopped himself. Data's careful picking of his way through describing what had happened with the Traveller had reminded Geordi of the more recent incident, when Beverly had been trapped in a pocket universe, collapsing down around her until Wesley -- with a little help -- had rescued her. Was the same sort of technology at play here? It didn't seem impossible. But that incident remained classified. "Actually, Data's right. And all of that is openly published. The Federation believes in open science."

"Or perhaps it simply claims to," Toras said, "so that its weapons development programmes can continue in secret without arousing suspicion."

Geordi sighed inwardly. This was going to be a long day.

* * *

Geordi and Worf stood side by side in the ready room, facing the captain. They had both been here before now in plenty of situations, both for a friendly word of advice and a dressing down. The problem was that right now Geordi had no idea which they were in for; once they reported that the analysis was underway, Captain Picard had asked them both to come as soon as possible. Deanna was sat on the couch, looking serious.

"Report," the captain said.

"Everything's set up," Geordi said. "But ... it's going to take some time; we're trying to cross-correlate huge datasets very precisely with position over multiple days."

"Mr Worf?"

"I have not detected any obvious Romulan subterfuge," Worf allowed grudgingly. "Lieutenant Commander Data assures me that Centurion Nevek has not made any attempt to perform untoward operations on our computer core."

"The holo-lab is doubly firewalled anyway," Geordi said. "It simulates any instructions first before sending them through to the main core. And I've rerouted things so that one of the Enterprise's cores is dedicated to this analysis. Partly it'll make things faster if the optronic relays don't have to deal with as much lightspeed lag, but it also means that in an extreme case we can shut that core down, even eject it into space if we have to, if something happens to it."

"Very well," Picard said. "Good work, gentlemen."

"Thank you, Captain," Geordi said, though his befuddlement at why they had been called here was only increasing.

"I have decided--" the glance in Deanna's direction suggested where the idea had originated from "--to allow the Romulans limited access to non-critical areas of the ship. As a gesture of goodwill, shall we say?"

"I don't sense any deception from them," Deanna said. "Guardedness, certainly. Caution. But I think they genuinely caught in the same problems as us. Nevek in particular seems open to the idea of collaboration. And Commander Tomalak ... I don't pretend to understand Romulan politics, but whatever games he's playing are in that arena; we're something between a distraction and something he can use to gain leverage."

The captain said, "Mr Worf, you'll be aware that the latest Starfleet intelligence reports suggest that there has been considerable upheaval on Romulus in recent months. The failure of several rather aggressive ploys, the growth of dissident groups, all of these have contributed to an opportunity for more moderate voices in the Senate ..."

"And what of Subcommander Toras?" Worf asked, addressing Deanna directly.

"I think she's ... sceptical," Deanna said. "But I think she obeys orders. She's loyal to Tomalak, even if she doesn't understand all of his motivations."

"Anyway," Picard said. "The point is, in the interests of promoting the spirt of collaboration that has begun here, I would like you two to spend some time with the Romulans this evening."

"Are you ... _ordering_ us to socialise?" Geordi said.

Picard considered for a moment, his cup of tea paused halfway to his mouth, then said, "Do I need to?"

"No, sir," Geordi said.

Worf's lips twitched, but he said nothing.

* * *

The captain had not-quite-ordered him to socialise, so socialise he would. But he hadn't told him he had to do so immediately.

Sickbay was quiet when he arrived, only a couple of longer-term patients resting on biobeds. He checked in quickly with Ensign Jain, still recovering from a nasty Parrises Squares injury. She seemed glad of the company.

Beverly emerged from her office. "What can we do for you, Geordi?"

"Hey, Doc," Geordi said. "Is there any chance you can run a diagnostic on my implants?"

She picked up a medical tricorder and flipped it open. "Are you getting pain from your VISOR again?"

"No more than usual," Geordi said. "I just ... want to be sure everything's in full working order."

"Ah," Beverly said. "You know, Doctor An'hallan did a superb job." After his experience last year, when the Romulans had kidnapped him and used his implants to turn him into an assassin, overlaying his knowledge of the experience with false memories of a holiday on Risa, the Enterprise had diverted to Starbase 89 for Geordi to have them thoroughly reset.

"And so did the computational team who deprogrammed them," Geordi said. "I'd still like to be sure."

"Fair enough," Beverly said. "Would you mind taking your VISOR off?"

Geordi did so. The transition from full-spectrum awareness to absolutely nothing feeding into his visual cortex was as abrupt and total as ever.

He could still sense Beverly's hand near his head, holding the hand scanner from her tricorder and moving it slowly round. But it became difficult to keep track of time, to know how long he had been waiting. "OK, you can put it back on now," she said.

Geordi fumbled for it at his side, and then clicked it back into place. The world sprang back into his awareness, just the same as it had been before.

Beverly was smiling at him. "Everything's absolutely fine. I promise."

* * *

When Geordi reached Ten Forward, he saw Nevek sat alone at one of the tables facing the windows. Several crewmembers were openly staring at him, and the feverishly whispered conversations going on around all the other tables suggested that their occupants were no less interested.

He ordered a drink and walked up to Nevek's table.

"Mind if I join you?" Geordi said.

"By all means," Nevek said, indicating an empty seat.

Geordi took it. Looking around, he could see that the interest of the rest of the crew was by no means diminished by his doing so.

They sat together in silence for a while, looking out at the vast emptiness beyond them. Even the nearest stars to here were much further away than normal; when they had been warping through the gulf between

"Enjoying the view?" Geordi said eventually.

"I must confess that I was not so much looking through the window as _at_ it," Nevek said. "The extra stress and potential fracture points inherent in the design of the Enterprise as a result of the decision to use transparent materials so widely in what I think you call 'the saucer section' must be considerable."

"We manage," Geordi said. "And we have very good structural integrity fields."

"Are you sure you're allowed to tell me that?" Nevek said with a smile.

"I won't tell Worf if you won't tell Toras."

"I was also contemplating what we might discover out there," Nevek said, returning his attention back to the window. "How much of a threat it might pose."

"Well," Geordi said, "if you're talking like that then at least you believe that it isn't us."

"Officially, Subcommander Toras has not ruled that possibility out."

"So us working together is a complicated double bluff?"

"A devious mind sees deviousness everywhere."

"Wow," Geordi said.

"I'm sorry?"

"I mean, I'm not an expert in the hierarchy of the Imperial Navy but if you're a Centurion and she's a Subcommander, then she's your superior, right?"

"She is not in my direct chain of command," Nevek said. "As Head of Engineering, I report directly to Commander Tomalak."

"But she's still--"

"A very senior officer on board the Terix?" Nevek said. "Yes. On the other hand, I believe that you outrank Lieutenant Worf, do you not?"

"Technically," Geordi said. "But it makes very little difference on a day-to-day basis. We're friends more than anything else."

"The fact that the Federation values its engineers over its security personnel, and that you barely even notice, are both intriguing to me. An interesting insight into how ... differently you do things." Nevek took a sip from his drink, leaving Geordi none the wiser whether he thought it was a good different or a bad different, though he suspected the latter. "Why are you so interested in my professional relationship with the Subcommander, anyway?"

"I just wouldn't think you'd be so rude about Toras behind her back," Geordi said. "Especially not to me."

"When was I rude about her?"

"You said, 'A devious mind sees deviousness everywhere'," Geordi reminded him.

"Yes," Nevek said. "It was a compliment. Subcommander Toras has a far more devious mind than me."

"I think the universal translator must be malfunctioning," Geordi said. "When I say 'devious', what do you hear? What does that word mean?"

"It means 'devious'," Nevek said, and Geordi cursed the translator for not leaving the word rendered in the original Romulan. "It is an adjective used to describe those who are skilled at subterfuge and strategy--"

"OK, OK, I believe you," Geordi said. He shook his head. "I guess that's my interesting insight into how _different_ things are."

"We still have much to learn about each other," Nevek said.

"Indeed we do, Centurion. Indeed we do."

* * *

The next morning, Data was already at work in the holodeck-lab when Geordi brought Nevek in from the transporter room. They were escorted, inevitably, by Worf and Toras.

"The analysis is complete," Data announced without preamble. He activated a spherical holographic display volume within the broad central circle of workstations.

"A hologram of a hologram," Nevek said. "And yet, I am sure it is we Romulans who live lives full of artifice, as far as you are concerned."

Geordi wasn't sure that living in a regime where the truth was defined by propaganda, and everything you said had to be carefully guarded, was at all comparable to taking advantage of holographic technology, but be wasn't about to argue the point. "What did you find, Data?" he asked.

"By combining the data from the warp tests--" Worf growled at that just for a moment "--with the sensor readings from the Terix, we have mapped out a small volume according to the rate of failures experienced." Data activated the display, and an intensity map appeared, subtle degrees of shading filling a tiny part of the volume.

"So there is a progression ..." Geordi said.

"But the implied size of this," Nevek said, pacing the room. "Tens of parsecs across."

"Even combining the data from the two ships, the range of our measurements is very limited by comparison to the overall volume that may be affected," Data said. "But, under the assumption of spherical symmetry, the triangulation between data points recorded at the same time by both vessels allows us to project ..." He adjusted the display, and a sphere filled half the display. The holodisplay was interfacing with Geordi's VISOR directly, using an unused part of the spectrum to portray it, so it appeared to him as the white with which he usually experienced gamma ray emissions. It sparkled bright in the centre, then faded off at the edges until it eventually merged with the surrounding blackness. The two icons portraying the ships seemed tiny against the size of the effect, even though they were enormously exaggerated in scale just to be visible at all. But they were already relatively deep within it.

"Is it spreading?" Toras and Worf both asked at the same time. Geordi saw that Nevek, like him, was smiling, but neither of them seemed to find it amusing.

"It is hard to be certain," Data said. "But we cannot rule it out. At the upper bound we have for the growth rate, it would encompass both the core territories of the Federation and the Romulan Star Empire within five to six months. In addition, it would begin to encroach on Klingon territory and completely engulf the Jaradan Confederacy within the same timescale. It could affect not just ships, but starbases, facilities on worlds. Possibly even organic life would be affected."

"We must discuss this with Commander Tomalak," Toras said. Nevek nodded.

"I have already suggested to Captain Picard that we should brief him and the Commander together," Data said. "However, I wished to be certain that you concurred with my analysis before doing so."

"Oh, I concur, Data," Geordi said. "I just wish that I didn't."


	3. Inflection Point

Picard and Tomalak set them back to work on finding, if not a solution, then at least a way to find out more about the effect so that they might begin to do so. Geordi found that he was hoping it was some sort of natural phenomenon; if another power out there had developed this sort of weaponry, it was bad news in any event -- if they were deliberately deploying it along the Romulan-Federation border, it was a sign that they were deliberately trying to stir up the already heightened state of tension along it.

And so, working furiously, they had come up with a plan. It wasn't one anyone liked, but it was the best they had available to them. And Geordi could hardly refuse to go, when Nevek had already volunteered.

A lot of people tried to find Geordi over the next few hours, to wish him well on the mission. Some of them were doing so with their tongues firmly in their cheeks, finding the whole situation amusing for one reason or another; some of them were sincerely earnest in their hopes that this limited cooperation would become a model for a thawing of Federation-Romulan relations; but some of them seemed to be doing so in order that they would have seen him one last time if he didn't come back.

"Your colleagues seem keen to wish you well," Nevek observed after Ensign Sutter had left.

"My _friends_ , Nevek, they're my friends. Don't try and tell me the Romulans don't have the idea of friendship."

Nevek considered. "My best friend when I was a child was a boy from the family who lived next door to us. Our mothers used to joke that we had known each other even before we were born, as they had been pregnant at the same time. The two of us played together every day for eight years; our families even went on holiday together. At the learning institute, he helped me with literature and poetry, and I assisted him with mathematics." Nevek paused, swallowed. "One day, as we were playing in the upper rooms of his house, I overheard his parents discussing sedition. I am not sure that he really understood the import of their words, but I did. I reported them to the Tal Shiar the same afternoon. The next day, the whole family were gone, taken to a re-education facility. We never saw any of them again."

"I'm ... not sure what the point of that story was," Geordi said slowly. He also wasn't sure that they'd really gone to a "re-education facility", rather than being executed, but he wasn't about to say that to Nevek.

"We do have friendship," Nevek said. "But friendship is not more important than loyalty to the state. All the officers on board the Terix, or any other ship of the Imperial Fleet, are there to serve the state. Their personal relationships are subordinate to that goal."

Geordi was saved from having to respond by Lefler's appearance.

Geordi was determined that when the time came for them to beam across to the Warbird, there wouldn't be a big farewell party, so he made sure that he took Nevek by a circuitous route. The plan succeeded, and so it was only O'Brien who was there to see him off. "Good luck, Commander," he said, as he energised the coils.

A moment later, he was in a much more cramped transporter room on board the Romulan ship. The annular confinement beam sparkled as it faded away, as though the secondary coils were slightly misaligned.

Nevek nodded to the transporter operator, who promptly left the room.

In his place entered Toras. "Commander La Forge," she said. "Welcome aboard."

"Thanks; it's a pleasure, I guess."

"I am here to escort the two of you to the shuttle bay," Toras went on. "Please remove your visual prosthetic."

"Wait, what?"

Nevek said, "Commander La Forge requires the device to see--"

"I am aware," Toras said. "I have consulted with Commander Tomalak and he agrees that this is a proportionate security measure to avoid La Forge being exposed to any classified design information. He _is_ a highly ranked Starfleet engineer."

"Why, thank you," Geordi said, with heavy sarcasm.

"And if another member of the Enterprise crew were here instead, would you have blindfolded them?" Nevek asked.

"Perhaps," Toras said. "If they were equally able to discern broad-spectrum electromagnetic, neutrino and axion signatures and interpret them according to detailed technical knowledge."

Geordi started to wonder exactly what about how the Romulan equivalent of EPS conduits worked was such a state secret, since as far as he could work out that would be the only thing he might be able to "discern" on a brief walk through the ship's corridors.

"If I had known you would be insisting on this, I would have arranged a site-to-site transport direct to the shuttlebay," Nevek said stiffly.

"And yet, you did not," Toras observed.

Geordi sighed. "It's fine, Nevek," he said. "If this is what it takes to make Subcommander Toras feel as though she's done her job, I'll play along." He reached up and removed his VISOR.

Then he felt Toras take it away. He trusted her to return it -- or at least, he thought he did -- but the experience still reminded him of the memories he'd recovered with Deanna's help, of the Romulans forcibly removing it so they could use his implants.

Instantly, he was plunged into darkness. This wasn't like it had been yesterday, in Sickbay, where he was still in a familiar environment. The deck beneath his feet still pulsed very faintly in sympathy with the Romulan engine core, but it was like listening to music played on an entirely different tonic system. The air had a sterile ozone tang to it, and although he could remember where the door and the transporter console had been, he didn't feel at all certain of finding his way there by himself.

He felt a hand at his elbow, gently steering him. Nevek.

"Is it far?" he asked.

"Two--"

"That's classified," Toras snapped.

"Lead on," Geordi said wearily.

There seemed to be a lot of twists and turns, presumably to disorientate him, but perhaps it was just the way the Warbird was designed; whatever the reason, he became glad of Nevek's hand, surprisingly gentle on his elbow, guiding him along. They didn't seem to encounter any other Romulans on the way. Whether that was because they were going by quiet routes, or Toras had intentionally cleared their path, he had no idea, but he suspected the latter.

He had counted thirteen sets of doors opening and closing on either side of them when Toras returned his VISOR. When he put it back on, the Romulan shuttlebay was a riot of colour: sparkling gamma ray emission from engine cores far less shielded than the Federation would allow, with a faint neutrino background all around; visible and ultraviolet backwash from tools in use repairing one of the larger vessels; and the shuttle that was to be theirs -- one of the smallest -- made obvious by the way it glowed in infrared compared to the others.

Geordi was about to comment, but realised that letting Toras realise what he had been able to deduce would only confirm her worst suspicions.

"Are you satisfied?" Nevek said, to Toras.

"I will remain until you have departed on your mission," Toras said. "Commander's orders."

"At your recommendation, no doubt," Nevek said. Turning to Geordi, he said, "This way, Commander La Forge."

The other Romulans working in the bay stopped and stared as they walked past. Geordi found it interesting: both that they hadn't been cleared out, and that their discipline didn't stretch as far as managing to ignore his presence completely. But soon enough, they were aboard the small, almost cylindrical craft, and Nevek was closing the rear door. There was some sort of positron source directly under their feet, though Geordi couldn't work out what it might be.

"You should secure yourself to your seat," Nevek said. "The initial acceleration will be considerable."

Geordi didn't need to be told twice: he had been there when they made the plan. Even if Romulan inertial dampening technology was as good as Nevek claimed, the acceleration they were going to put themselves through was inevitably going to bleed through into the cabin. He fastened the four-point harness around himself as he remembered the calculations: how they would push the engines to maximum so that sheer momentum would carry them to the centre of the anomaly, even if its effects mounted as much as the most pessimistic projections said, and then out to the other side; while they were gone, the Enterprise and the WARBIRDNAME would circle around the anomaly at warp, coming no closer than they already were, to rendezvous with them. This shuttle was an older design, Nevek had said; its sturdy hull would last longer against the entropic effect than any of the Enterprise's craft.

"Are you ready?" Nevek said.

"As I'll ever be," Geordi said.

Nevek pressed a single button on his console and they shot out of the shuttlebay into space, the stars streaking past in a blur. Geordi felt himself pushed back into his seat, every part of his body feeling as though it was being blown backwards. He tried to say something to Nevek, but when he opened his mouth, his lips wobbled too much to even make the attempt, and he closed it again.

Eventually, the acceleration stopped, as suddenly as it had begun, and they were hurtling through space at enormous speed, and yet there was no sensation of motion at all. The wonders of relativity.

"All systems remain nominal," Geordi said, checking the display. "I think," he added, as he realised that many of the Romulan glyphs were completely meaningless to him. "Does this thing have a translation function?"

Nevek nodded. "It is restricted," he said. "But my authorisation should unlock it." He worked his console, and a moment later Geordi's reconfigured into something much more recognisable. "Track the isotopic balance of the reactor emission," Nevek suggested. "If the entropic field extends to the quantum scale, it will begin to vary monotonically with the scale of the effect."

Geordi set up a simple script to try to override the standard time averaging of the sensor output: the Romulan software architecture was very resistant to user modification, but he eventually managed to persuade it by allowing it to continue to write the usual output to an empty buffer, while sending the useful information to his display.

"The proportion of unstable isotopes _is_ declining," Geordi said after a few minutes. "But faster than predicted."

Geordi kept a nervous watch on the display as the effect continued to accelerate. The shuttle's computer could not update the model with the new information fast enough, and with the Enterprise travelling the long way round at low warp, there was no way to link to the computer core in real time for it to be able to do so. But Geordi didn't need computer assistance to see the outline of the implications: what they had thought was an exponential decay from a large but fixed effect size in the centre was in fact more like an inverse-square law, maybe even inverse-cube.

In which case the size of the effect at the centre of the anomaly was unlimited; possibly even tending towards infinity.

"Nevek," Geordi said, "I don't think this is good news."

Nevek glanced at the display. "Indeed not. However, we will be travelling fast enough that we can collect sensor readings and escape again in all but the most dire scenarios."

"It is not the shuttle I am concerned about at this time," Nevek said. Geordi looked at him properly then, instead of ahead at the display. Something about the set of his face suggested he was concentrating hard, much harder than simply waiting would require.

"Commander La Forge," Nevek said. "There is something I believe I must explain to you." He seemed to be grimacing, as though he was in pain, or whatever he was about to say would be at great personal cost. Perhaps both.

"Are you ... When we talked about how different things were, in the Federation, did that-- Were you-- Are you trying to tell me you want to defect? 'Cos I've got to be honest, you've picked a hell of a time to do it."

"You think that I wish to betray my Empire, my people?" Nevek shook his head, then grimaced again. "Did you understand nothing that I told you? Of loyalty to the state being the highest ideal?"

"I'm sorry, I--"

"It is a much more ... personal matter than that." Nevek swallowed. "I believe that the field is having a biological effect, as well as a technological one."

"Well, sure, but we factored that in; organic self-repair systems are much more effective than anything technological, even Data's. That's why I came, and not him."

"Nevertheless, I am certain that I am being affected. I suspect that you are too, you simply have no mechanism for detecting it."

"Nevek, I'm sorry, I just don't understand."

"There is no reason why you should," he said, and then groaned, his face screwing up as though he was in great pain. "You have no cause to be familiar with Romulan mating cycles."

"Mating cycles?" Geordi said, incredulous. "Nevek, are you--"

Nevek groaned again, then got back in control of himself. "There comes a time in the life of any Romulan where the urge to mate becomes ... fierce," he said. "Fiercer than usual, at least."

"The Vulcans have _pon farr_ , but--" Geordi said.

"The _Vulcans_ ," Nevek said dismissively. "Applying their overelaborate rituals to that which they cannot wrestle into submission with logic alone. Pathetic."

"But then--"

"We Romulans embrace our feelings," Nevek said. "We do not suppress the urge the rest of the time. Though not even the Vulcans do that, whatever some of them might have you believe. But ultimately, we share much biologically with them, including the same cycles. Since re-contact last century, we have established that it is likely linked to the orbital period of one of the outer planets of the Vulcan system."

"But your cycle is ... out of sync? That's how you know we're being affected biologically?"

"I believe my body must have physically aged by three months as we have travelled through the area of the effect." Nevek seemed to have things under better control, for now at least.

"Then ... you were nearly due?"

"We schedule leave appropriately," Nevek said. "It is never usually an issue. And in ships on long missions ... Well, that is irrelevant to our situation. Let's just say people make arrangements."

Geordi didn't have time to think about the implications any further right then and there, as an alarm began blaring inside the shuttle. He turned his attention back to the screen. "Hull integrity just dropped below 20%," he said. An Enterprise shuttlepod would have gone beyond design tolerances by now; Geordi imagined what it would be like to hang in space, knowing that the structural integrity field was about to fail, that everything around you was already only being held together by it, and would fly off in all directions as soon as it failed. Perhaps one of the new long-range runabouts would be able to withstand things better, but the Enterprise wasn't due to take any on board until they next returned to Utopia Planitia.

"We should transmit our data to the Terix," Nevek said. "The Enterprise too," he added after a moment. "In case we are unsuccessful."

Geordi started work; the ships should be back out of warp by now, in position at the rendezvous point, so he aimed the transmission in that direction. "Don't give up hope yet," Geordi said. But even as he said it, the readings he was monitoring were dropping off ever faster. "How close are we now to the centre of the effect?" he asked.

"Two trillion kilometres," Nevek said. "One and a half trillion. One--"

The shuttle juddered to a halt.

"What ... just happened?" Geordi said.

Nevek was about to reply when everything broke apart around them.

* * *

If it was a transporter beam, it was the worst one Geordi had ever travelled by. He lay on the ground, feeling weak, nauseous, and groggy, as though his insides had just been scrambled, which for all he knew they had been.

Worse still, he realised as he stood up, his VISOR was only giving him intermittent vision. He caught roughly humanoid shapes, a few metres away, but instead of emitting infrared as he might have expected, their blackbody spectrum was all the way down at radio frequencies.

"What can you see?" Nevek asked croakily, from his position half-slumped on the floor. It was only then that Geordi realised there was no visible-spectrum light filtering through at all. To Nevek, this place would be entirely dark.

He reached out for Nevek, helped him to an upright position. Nevek didn't let go of his hands once they were both standing.

"Not much," Geordi said. "There are ... creatures here. But they're cold. Near absolute zero. _Unbelievably_ near. Thousandths of a degree, millionths maybe." Geordi put his hand out and, as he had expected, met a forcefield. Their body heat would be deadly to these beings, if it were not contained.

Nevek coughed. "What do you mean?"

"They're colder than the universe itself, Nevek," Geordi said. Even the most remote parts of the universe were bathed in the faint glow of the cosmic microwave background radiation at 2.7 Kelvin. "But that shouldn't be possible, they wouldn't be able to transfer wasted energy to the surroundings ..."

From all around them, a rasping noise filled the air. The more Geordi listened to it, the more it seemed to be language, but not one he recognised at all. He tapped his combadge ineffectually, to try to get its translation functions to extend to the new source; but it made a sparking noise and shorted out.

Nevek said something, but with the failure of the combadge Geordi heard only Romulan.

"I'm sorry, Nevek," he said, slowly. "I don't understand."

"They are ... angry," Nevek said, in halting English.

Geordi could understand why he thought that; the tone of the speech was harsh in the extreme and it was one long unending string of syllables. But Geordi wondered if that was simply a consequence of what must be very different biology. "I think they might be ... scared."

The voice stopped. A moment later, one of the creatures was approaching now; timidly, gingerly, as though getting too close to Geordi and Nevek was something very difficult. It stretched out a limb -- close up, even amongst the sputtering, half-failing output of his VISOR, Geordi could make out enough detail to see that it was angular, almost like a spike; indeed the whole creature seemed crystalline somehow, the part that might be its head topped with encrustations rather than hair.

The VISOR failed completely and he was plunged into darkness.

"Nevek," Geordi said, as quietly and as calmly as he could. "I can't see any more."

Nevek simply gripped Geordi's hands tighter in his own, though for whose reassurance Geordi couldn't be sure.

The strange voice resumed, filling the air around them. Geordi still couldn't make any sense of it, but somehow it sounded more human than before. The sounds were nonsense, but they were more grouped together now, sounding like words and sentences.

"We need to keep talking," Geordi said.

Nevek seemed to be gaining confidence in his English. "If it will provide you with reassurance, I am happy--"

"No-- I mean, it will, but ... I think they're trying to learn our language. Or they have something like a universal translator, a system that's trying to do it. But it's copying the patterns of our speech, can you hear?"

They listened to the strange alien sounds together for a moment. "I think I can," Nevek said.

"The more we talk, the more it will learn," Geordi said.

"Learn _your_ language," Nevek pointed out. "But very well. We should talk. Tell me about the technical specifications of your vessel."

"I don't think Worf would be at all happy with me if I did that," Geordi said. "Let's choose something neutral."

"Very well, tell me about your childhood," Nevek said.

Geordi told his story, how he had shuttled between his parents for much of his early life, as their different assignments within Starfleet took them to different places. How that had given him the urge to join Starfleet himself, to become an explorer like them. He told Nevek about his pets, how different it had been when he finally went to school on Earth as a teenager, compared to growing up on ships and outposts where education was less formalised and he'd been able to pursue his own interests. About how he'd felt the day he'd received his acceptance to Starfleet Academy.

All the while, the voice continued all around them, but quieter, as though it understood that they were trying to help it. Geordi thought that perhaps the phonemes were becoming more similar to those he and Nevek were using. A crystalline being -- if that was what they were -- could presumably produce a much wider range of sounds than they could, simply by resonating different-sized structures inside its voice organ.

Just for a moment, Geordi's VISOR stuttered back to life; the torso of the being near them was pulsing with microwave emission. He realised that they didn't communicate by sound at all, but electromagnetically; even realising that the sound waves he and Nevek had been emitting had been communication was a leap that they had made. If only his VISOR would stay working, he might be able to learn _their_ language directly.

"You-are-explorers," the voice said a moment later.

"It is a translator!" Geordi said. "But they speak in microwaves; I can _see_ them talking, Nevek--"

"Your VISOR is working again?"

"For the moment," Geordi said. "No idea how long it will last." He turned to the being. "Yes, we are explorers." Nevek didn't contradict him.

Another pulse of microwaves, and then the voice said, "We-are-explorers. You-are-explorers, we-are-explorers."

There were protocols in First Contact situations -- which this indubitably now was. But Geordi's natural curiosity got the better of him. The first question that popped into his head was, "Where are you exploring from?"

"Outside-your-space," the voice said.

"The Delta Quadrant?" Nevek said.

"Perhaps they mean subspace," Geordi said.

"Everything-that-is-is-not-everything-that-is."

Geordi was starting to understand. "I think ... they're talking about other universes," he said. "Space, in the most general sense."

"We-explore-beyond-everything-that-is-to-find-more-than-everything-that-is," came the reply.

"Trans-universal travel?" Geordi said. "Incredible. But how do you do it?"

The alien gave a long sequence of microwave pulses, but the voice remained silent. "I don't think they can translate that," Geordi said.

"They replied?" Nevek said.

"I could see they were trying to. Let's try and work out what we do know. They're from an _entirely_ different universe, not just another dimension of this one. A universe from an entirely different region of the primordial inflation."

"Perhaps one with different physical laws?" Nevek said. "Which would explain why they cannot interact with us, why they appear so anomalous."

The truth struck Geordi like a bolt of lightning, so much so that he let go of Nevek's hands to clap his own together. "Or a universe that's much _older_ than ours. Its Big Bang trillions, quadrillions of years in the past, the whole universe cooled to within a fraction of absolute zero. A universe where carbon-based life must be long since extinct. And yet-- Life continues, somehow. Isn't that incredible, Nevek?"

As he spoke, the VISOR failed again, this time providing pure white noise to his implants. But right at that moment, he didn't care.

"You-are-correct. Everything-that-is-is-ending."

"So you are not _just_ explorers?"

"We-are-explorers. We-are-the-first. The-many-will-follow."

"Refugees," Geordi said.

"Or invaders," Nevek countered.

"We-must-find- _home_ ," the voice said. "Your-home-not-our-home."

"Our universe is inhospitable to them," Geordi said. "We knew that already."

"Then why do they remain here?"

"The-technical-specifications-of-your-vessel-are-inadequate," the voice said after a moment.

"What have our vessels got to do with it?" Geordi said.

"No," Nevek said. "They are attempting to explain in terms we can understand. The translator failed when they tried before. Now they are parroting back phrases without really understanding them; do you remember, I asked you about the Enterprise?"

"Of course!" Geordi said. "We need to give them a _vocabulary_!"

"For discussing technology, and ... cosmology?" Nevek said.

"That's right!"

"I am no more willing to divulge classified technical information than you are," Nevek said.

"Let's start with the cosmology, then," Geordi said. "Pure science isn't classified, whatever Subcommander Toras thinks. What's the favoured theory in Romulan science for inflation ... chaotic or eternal?"

They talked for some time, building from truths universally accepted by all the major powers of the Alpha Quadrant to more speculative ideas, but ones which might be more relevant to what their hosts needed to be able to explain.

Still, though, the voice remained silent. Geordi wished his VISOR was working, so that he could tell whether the alien was trying to talk and not being translated, or just waiting quietly for more vocabulary to build up.

"I think we need to keep talking," Geordi said. "Perhaps about ... more technical issues."

Nevek sounded pained. "I have no wish to escape this situation only to be tried for treason," he said. "Perhaps your Federation would forgive you, but the Empire would not."

"Well, how about this then? We'll discuss _each other's_ ships. You tell me what the Empire has worked out about the Galaxy class, and I'll tell you what we think we know about D'deridex class warbirds."

Nevek was silent for a moment; considering, Geordi hoped. "That would be acceptable. On the proviso that I have no intention of confirming or denying any of your laughable speculations."

"And given that my VISOR's not working, and it's pitch black in here, we won't be able to tell anything from any faces the other might pull, either."

"A fair point," Nevek said. "Very well. You may commence."

"Well, our studies of your warp wakes have suggested that instead of a dilithium matrix, your newer models seem to use quantum singularities to power the warp drive."

"How interesting," Nevek said. "Our data from the Iconian incident suggests that your vessels are prone to fracturing at certain key points in their superstructure under extreme strain."

The Romulans had lost a warbird that day, too; it was odd to hear Nevek being so clinical about it. "And that's where your tactical officers are instructed to concentrate their fire, I'll bet," Geordi said.

"Fortunately," Nevek said, "your hypothesis has not been tested in the field. There have been no incidents involving more than ... warning shots."

"Including when you shot at us the other day?"

"I am not a telepath," Nevek said. "I cannot tell you what Commander Tomalak's intentions would have been, had the circumstances been different."

"You mean, if Captain Picard hadn't talked him down?"

"I do not believe these discussions will be very productive," Nevek said. He reached out for Geordi's hands in the dark, and found them. They felt warm to the touch, and Geordi remembered what Nevek had said, about the fever that would soon come over him. For all Geordi could tell, though, at present he was controlling it masterfully.

"OK," Geordi said. "We know your cloaking device emits tetryon particles, when it's not fully aligned."

"And your deflector dish is overpowered by several orders of magnitude for its stated purpose of dealing with space debris in the ship's path," Nevek said. "Our analysts are split between believing it to be overengineering due to safety consciousness, or for use as a weapon."

Geordi couldn't suppress the memory of the Borg crisis; how, the one time they had tried to use it as such, it had failed utterly because they had already taken Captain Picard.

They carried on discussing technicalities of each other's ships, until, after a while, the voice began again. "The-quantum-signature-of-your-universe-is-inimical-to-our-world-engine," it said.

" _Now_ we're getting somewhere," Geordi said. "Their ... trans-universal drive must have malfunctioned when they arrived in our universe."

"Then how are they able to project the entropic field?"

"Presumably some equipment is more sensitive than others. They could still create a bubble of their own space-time, and that will have arrested the effect on them, but not reversed it. Hey, _maybe_ that's why the transporter felt so odd, if it wasn't just transporting us, but transliterating us into a different quantum signature."

"An interesting speculation," Nevek said. "We might be able to--" He broke off, addressing the aliens directly. "May we see your equipment?"

"What-is-'see'?"

"Perceive by electromagnetic radiation," Geordi said. "Like you speak with, but _much_ shorter wavelength." He did some mental calculations, comparing the microwave transmissions he had seen before his VISOR failed to the visible spectrum. "Around ... ten thousand times shorter."

"We-can-speak-high," the voice said after a moment. "But-only-speak-quiet." The way it came from all around them must be even more disorientating for Nevek, Geordi thought.

There was no difference in the useless output from the VISOR, but Nevek's gasp told him that something had happened. "What is it?"

"They've turned on a light; it's only dim, but-- This is incredible."

"Tell me, Nevek, what do you see?"

"The creatures are like silver-grey shadows," Nevek said. "Almost like thin walking trees made out of crystal. There are _dozens_ of them in here."

"And can you see their technology?"

"It's all around ... The chamber is crystalline, and it seems to be _resonating_ , in multiple harmonics at once. I'm not sure there is a clear distinction between them and the technology," Nevek said. "Some of them seem to be rooted to the spot, connected into the chamber."

"Sounds like the Borg," Geordi said.

"No, nothing like that," Nevek said. "This is fluid, _organic_ even though they're completely inorganic, as far as I can see. As though any of them can be anything they want, whenever they want. Who knows? Perhaps they only took on these forms in mimicry of us, and their true appearance is something far stranger."

"We-are-all-you-'see'," the voice said.

"Sounds as though you're right," Geordi said. "But I don't know that that's going to make it any easier for us to help them."

Nevek addressed the voice again. "May we move? See more closely?"

"Your-temperature-is-inimical-to-us," said the voice after a pause.

"If you moved the forcefield," Geordi said, "and we kept pace with it ..."

"We-understand," the voice said.

Geordi felt a tingle as the forcefield brushed against him, making him stumble forward. Nevek caught him and they walked huddled together as the forcefield shepherded them in one particular direction.

"Where are they taking us?" Geordi asked.

"It's a particularly large encrustation of crystal," Nevek said. "I would say it's about the same mass as two or three of the ... what seem to be the individuals."

"Perhaps they fuse together and break apart," Geordi said. "Or perhaps larger ones just have more ... processing power, I guess."

"Can we get more light?" Nevek said. "Can your high-speaking be louder-speaking, as well?"

"For-a-short-time," the voice said.

Again, Geordi couldn't tell the difference but Nevek's reaction let him know that it had worked. "Fascinating," he was saying. "There's some sort of ... it looks a little like a subspace oscillator, I suppose, but as though it works on something entirely other than subspace."

"That would make a certain amount of sense," Geordi said, "if it's how they move between not just layers of subspace, but entire 'realms'--"

"Yes-oscillate-oscillate-oscillate," the voice said, cutting across him.

"This must be what's malfunctioning," Nevek said.

"We-cannot-oscillate-freely-oscillations-wrong-oscillations-forced."

"I can't make out the details of the mechanism -- if it is a mechanism, and not one of the individuals in a radically different form," Nevek said. "But I think it has ... a kind of quantum phase--" He paused for a moment then lapsed into Romulan, to use a word that he clearly had no English equivalent for.

"Are you saying the whole thing's jammed?"

"I suppose so, yes," Nevek said. "It's a little as though it's getting stuck on the quantum signature of our universe, when it tries to oscillate itself into another one."

"Yes-yes-yes-yes," said the voice, and continued on in the background while Geordi and Nevek continued to discuss the situation.

"Well, is there anything we can do about it?"

"I think there might be," Nevek said. "But not from here." Geordi could hear him pacing around within the confines of their small forcefield. "One of the quantum singularities from the Terix could--"

"Of course!" Geordi said. "They must exist in a state of quantum flux, not wholly within our universe. Your power core taps other universes entirely, at least in part."

"An excellent deduction," Nevek said. "But please, do be clear when you talk to your superiors that it was a _deduction_ you made, not anything I told you directly."

"Of course," Geordi said.

"If we equipped a torpedo with a quantum singularity, we could fire it here; the inter-realm effects should be enough to help their device--"

"Or their friend," Geordi said.

"--get unstuck. But the area around the event horizon where the effect holds is tiny, and there's no way we could aim that precisely."

"But if we made the singularity bigger ..." Geordi said, starting to pace too now. He could feel Nevek's body close by, doing the same thing.

"But how could we feed it more mass?"

"Energy is mass," Geordi said simply. "Ee equals em cee squared, five and a half centuries' old physics."

"On Romulus that relation has been known for rather longer," Nevek couldn't resist pointing out. "But we would still need an enormous energy source."

"The Enterprise's main deflector!" Geordi said joyfully, and then collided with Nevek as they both lost track of the other's location, lost in their thoughts of how it would work.

They scrambled to help each other back up, as the voice said, "You-can-help-you-will-help." For the first time it seemed to have a note of emotion in it, a note of hope.

"Yes," Nevek said. "We can help."

"We _will_ help," Geordi added.

"You-can-help-you-will-help."

And then the strange blackness enfolded them once again.


	4. Periodic Boundary Conditions

The alien transporter deposited them back on the shuttle. There was no time to indulge in any feelings of queasiness, however; the shuttle was even closer now to complete structural integrity failure, its alarm still blaring steadily to warn them of that fact. And with the degradation of the engines, there was no way for them to get anywhere near their previous velocity.

"I guess they didn't understand that we can't just wish our way back," Geordi said ruefully. "Nevek, if we don't make it, it's been a pleasure. Albeit far too brief a one."

"I will not countenance that type of talk, Commander," Nevek said quickly. "We are going to make it. I just need to work out _how_."

"We need to find some way to fire ourselves out of here," Geordi said. "However they arrested our momentum--"

"Of course!" Nevek said.

Geordi had a sense of tremendous activity from Nevek, though his VISOR was still giving him no useful output, so he couldn't see exactly what was going on.

"Nevek, what are you doing? What's your plan?"

The alarm that had been sounding the whole time stepped up in pitch. Geordi couldn't work out what was going on, only that Nevek was working furiously. "Nevek, I can't tell what you're doing, remember."

"A torpedo will be our way out of this in more ways than one," Nevek said. "As you said, we can _fire_ ourselves back home."

"In a torpedo? You give your _shuttles_ torpedoes?"

"You don't?"

"No," Geordi said, "we don't." At least it explained the positron emission he'd seen when he'd first come on board, he thought to himself.

But Nevek had other things on his mind. "I will need your assistance," he said. "Stand back; I will access the torpedo bay by retracting the floor."

Geordi retreated until his back was curved against the wall of the shuttle.

He heard Nevek jumping down into what was presumably only a shallow area underneath the cabin. "Walk forward," he said. "Step down carefully. One large step."

Geordi did so, and found himself on firm ground once more, only a little lower than he had been a moment ago.

"I am removing the outer casing," Nevek said. "Can you feel it?"

Geordi felt for the latches and tried. He began to lift, but it was too heavy. Then he felt Nevek pulling too, and they managed to lever it off on one side, so that it swung open, like a door. Or, Geordi thought grimly, the lid of a coffin.

Nevek started to move; Geordi wasn't sure where until he felt Nevek's arms around his, positioning his hands around something thick and stubby. "You have a secure grip?"

"I guess," Geordi said.

"You are holding onto the warhead. We must remove it." He felt Nevek release him, presumably heading to the opposite end. "On my mark," he said a moment later. "One, two, three, _mark_."

Geordi tugged, and finally, as Nevek did the same, he felt the warhead give way; between them, they heaved it up and threw it out onto the floor of the shuttle.

"Get inside," Nevek said.

"Nevek, how will you--"

"A time delay," Nevek said. "But only a short one," he added, as the alarm became even more insistent; critical failure must now be very imminent. "Now get inside, there is no time to waste."

Geordi crawled into the torpedo casing as he heard Nevek pull himself back up into the main body of the shuttle, and work frantically at the console, the series of bleeps and occasional buzzes as he programmed it cutting through the ever-present blaring of the alarm.

Then he felt Nevek jump down and pull himself into the housing -- Geordi had to squeeze up to make space -- and pull the casing down over the pair of them. It thudded shut only moments before they were suddenly accelerated away from the shuttle entirely, a much bigger kick than the one they had felt when the shuttle was launched from the Terix. Geordi could only imagine what was happening to the shuttle now; it had been so close to complete disintegration that the recoil from launching the torpedo must have destroyed it.

Nevek was silent, but close to him. He felt very warm, as far as Geordi can tell.

"Are you all right?" Geordi asked.

Nevek said nothing, but did let out a low moan.

"Talk to me, Nevek," Geordi said. "All right, then," he said after the silence persisted, "I'm going to talk to you. How come you speak English?"

"It is a requirement for those in the fleet to study at least one alien language at the Naval Academy."

"Well, then, I'm glad you didn't pick Klingon," Geordi said. "Mine is _very_ rusty. And I definitely wouldn't have been able to discuss quantum singularities in it."

As he spoke, he realised that the white noise in his visual perception was not entirely random any longer; his ability to perceive things was beginning to return. A blurred, extremely partial image of his surroundings built up. And by far the most prominent feature of it was Nevek, whose infrared emission was spiking.

"Nevek, you don't look too good."

"I thought your VISOR was malfunctioning?"

"It's starting to come back now we're getting further from the centre of the entropic field, and ... even at about 10% operability, I can tell you're burning up."

"It is nothing," Nevek said, through gritted teeth.

"Nevek, is it the ... personal matter we discussed? Have you been feeling like this the whole time we were down there?"

"Commander La Forge," Nevek said. "I must apologise in advance if--"

"I will not countenance that type of talk, Centurion," Geordi said.

"I cannot--"

"Nevek," Geordi said. "It's all right. You're going to be all right."

"No."

"It's all right," Geordi said again. "We'll be at the rendezvous in a few hours."

"I ..." Nevek groaned. "I may not have a few hours."

And then Nevek's hands were grabbing at him urgently, his whole body rocking up against him, and suddenly the heat radiating from Nevek's crotch became a hardness pressing into Geordi's thigh--

Nevek groaned again, the way he had earlier when he had suppressed it, the sound enormously loud in the confines of the torpedo casing. "I apologise," he gasped. "I will not ... I will try to prevent ..."

Geordi was already doing the calculations in his head; at the speed they had launched the torpedo, it would be another half-hour before it reached the safe distance at which the Enterprise and the Terix would have parked themselves. The now-disintegrated shuttle was long overdue, so they would be searching, but it might take them a long time to find something so small.

Geordi felt terribly conscious of Nevek's body next to his, of the way it almost trembled with suppressed desire. Of his own response: the way his heart rate had peaked, the sweat prickling his skin, the stirring of his own cock. Was Nevek giving off some type of pheromones that were affecting him? Or was it just an atavistic response to the sheer proximity of another so highly aroused?

"Nevek, I--" Geordi was surprised by the hoarseness of his own voice. But then he found that no more words would come. That he wasn't even sure what the next words were going to be.

Geordi got along well with Nevek. He was proud of the way they'd worked together, both back on board the Enterprise and just now in the alien chamber; they'd been through something almost impossible to describe, something that no one else in their entire universe had ever experienced. He would even go so far as to say he liked the guy, and considering how badly his previous encounters with Romulans had gone, that was saying something.

But none of that meant he wanted this ... did it?

But then, here in the heat of the moment, he didn't _not_ want it either. And there were wider considerations: the success of the mission, his simple duty as a sentient being to help someone in distress if he could.

"Nevek," he said again, and had to clear his throat before continuing. "It's all right."

"I--"

Geordi put his hand on Nevek's hip, at the join of the two pieces of his uniform. "It's _all right_ ," he said again.

And then Nevek leaned into him, his lips brushing against Geordi's for just a moment before Nevek's tongue probed into his mouth. Geordi could feel that Nevek was giving way to pure instinct, becoming rougher and rougher; Nevek was thrusting against him, as much as the tight space allowed, and Geordi slid his hand inside his pants, not so much rubbing his cock as allowing it to buck back and forth against his palm.

Nevek's hands moved to Geordi's neck, fumbling with the magnetic fastening of his clothes; between the confined space and Nevek's unfamiliarity with Starfleet uniforms, he had to concentrate for a moment and his cock went still; the feeling of it resting in Geordi's hand was intense. Nevek's cock was thick and veiny, and for just a moment Geordi's imagination conjured forth a very vivid impression of what it would be like to feel it thrusting into him. It was a moment before Geordi realised that he was himself getting harder in response.

Geordi wriggled slightly as Nevek lowered his uniform down his body to allow him to get it past his hips, and as Geordi's cock sprang free, Nevek grabbed it roughly, pumping back and forth.

Geordi started tugging at Nevek's own uniform, the pants coming off with ease, but the cumbersome tunic more difficult to remove. As Nevek manoeuvred to allow him to do so, their hands kept returning to each other's cocks, sliding over and round them in desperate, urgent movements.

Once they were completely naked, it seemed as though the effort of achieving that in these conditions had taken all of Nevek's remaining ability to concentrate. He was operating entirely on instinct now, pulling Geordi towards him so that their cocks rubbed against each other, kissing him hard, pressing his whole body up against him.

Geordi's hand was trapped awkwardly for a moment, but he managed to slide it round; as he did so, it grazed against the tip of Nevek's cock and he felt a drop of pre-cum resting there; thinking quickly, he pressed it into his palm and slicked it over Nevek's shaft. It wasn't going to provide all that much lubrication, though. In other circumstances, he would have easily been able to replicate some. Even if the torpedo had been just a tiny bit larger, he could have gone down on Nevek, coating him with as much of his own saliva as he could manage. Another mental image rose unbidden into his mind: Nevek's hands grabbing at the sides of his head, his cock thrusting between Geordi's lips, a blowjob turning into a facefucking.

If Nevek had been in his right mind, Geordi might have made a joke about them having one more engineering problem to solve. But then, if Nevek had been in his right mind, they probably wouldn't have been doing this at all.

Improvising as best he could, Geordi lifted his hand to his mouth and half-spat, half-dribbled into it, before returning it to Nevek's cock and swirling it around to rub it in. Then he rolled through one hundred and eighty degrees, a manoeuvre only possible because he was pressed up so tightly against Nevek.

And then it was all happening at once, Nevek pulling him in close, thrusting up into him, hard and fast -- there was a brief moment of pain as he stretched to accommodate Nevek's size, that transmuted almost instantly into pleasure, and then Geordi was carried away by sensation, the heat of Nevek's skin against his, the feel of his mouth against his neck. Geordi scrabbled with his hand to place it over Nevek's, grabbed it and placed it around Geordi's own cock, which felt so hard he was certain he was going to come any moment. Even in the state he was in, Nevek understood and began stroking Geordi, hand wrapped around his cock like a fist as he pumped back and forth.

Geordi lost track of everything. The tight confines of the torpedo tube had become the entire observable universe, the rhythm of Nevek sliding in and out his only measure of time. But soon, all too soon, he came, his come splattering against the torpedo casing. With his VISOR working again, he could see it, its infrared emission shifting downwards rapidly as it cooled.

Nevek continued fucking him and, able to concentrate more now that his own immediate desire was taken care of, Geordi deliberately squeezed him tighter with his ass. Nevek groaned and pulled Geordi even tighter into him, thrusting once, twice, thrice more before coming himself.

They lay together, Nevek's arms wrapped around Geordi, for another uncountable length of time.

"Commander La Forge--"

Geordi laughed as he rolled back over to face Nevek once more. "No, you know, after that I really am going to have to insist that you call me Geordi."

Nevek laughed too, and Geordi realised it was the first time he had heard that. "Very well, Geordi. Thank you. I apologise that I was not able to keep control for longer."

"It seems to me you were already making a Herculean effort," Geordi said. "And-- Well, let's just say in the end I didn't mind you losing control."

Before they could discuss things any further, however, the torpedo rocked all around them. Geordi bashed his head slightly against the side.

"What was that?" Nevek said.

"I'm not sure," Geordi replied.

"We should be outside the worst of the entropic effect," Nevek said. "If the torpedo has survived this long, it should not be in imminent danger of structural failure."

Geordi thought he could hear something, a faint modulating whisper that seemed familiar, the faint sound made as untold trillions of gravitational waves were summoned into existence and collapsed again. Looking round, _through_ the wall of the torpedo, he could see a characteristic pattern of graviton emission. "It's the Enterprise's tractor beam! They've found us, Nevek!" And without really thinking about it, he pulled Nevek towards him for a celebratory kiss.

"We should dress," Nevek said once they broke apart.

"We really should," Geordi agreed.

* * *

They landed with a bump in what Geordi presumed was the Enterprise's main shuttlebay.

A few moments later, the torpedo casing was wrenched aside with apparent ease. Looking up, Geordi was unsurprised to see Data holding it in front of him, looking at it as though it was a particularly large piece in a jigsaw puzzle he was doing.

Data laid the casing aside and offered one hand to each of them, pulling them up together with ease.

Standing behind him, Geordi could see now that he was upright again, was Captain Picard himself, along with Beverly, Alyssa and a whole team for sickbay. They practically swarmed over him and Nevek.

Geordi felt as though everyone must have been able to tell what he and Nevek had been doing just minutes ago, but thanks to whoever had invented genuinely smart fabrics back in the 22nd Century, he looked as well turned out as he ever did despite having pulled his clothes on very rapidly. Perhaps the medical scans were more revealing, but if they were Beverly said nothing. "They're both fine, Jean-Luc," she said, slipping into informality in the urgency of the moment.

Picard tapped his combadge. "Picard to Bridge. Hail the Terix and let them know that we have their chief engineer, safe and sound." He stepped forward. "Gentlemen. You seem to have had an eventful time."

"You don't know the half of it, sir," said Geordi.

* * *

"Absolutely fascinating," the captain was saying a quarter of an hour later, after they had briefed him. Watching Nevek explain had been strangely fascinating to Geordi -- or perhaps not so strangely, given the intimate experience they had shared. But it had still been a revelation; he had been much more confident than a couple of days ago. Was it that Tomalak and Toras weren't here yet? Was it simply that the fever had burned out of him, leaving him clear-headed? Or was there, Geordi allowed himself to wonder, something about what they had shared that had affected Nevek in a similar way to how it had affected Geordi? "Our mission is to seek out new life," Picard went on, "but to find it from another realm of space-time entirely ..."

"It's also our mission to help those in need, where we can," Geordi said.

"Oh, absolutely," the captain said. "And you're certain this plan will work?"

"I don't think we can be certain of anything," Nevek said. "But it is definitely our best shot."

"Very well. Assuming Commander Tomalak agrees, we'll act on it as soon as possible. Are there any preparations we should be making now?"

"I'll need to adjust the deflector dish," Geordi said. "Reinforce the EPS conduits, check none of them have been damaged by the entropy field." He looked at Nevek. "I could use some assistance."

* * *

They were installing extra shielding on the primary conduit when Nevek said, "Geordi, I want to--"

"Nevek, please, don't apologise. Or thank me. It was--"

"Necessary," Nevek said. "I understand. You acted for the good of the mission."

"No, Nevek, I acted for the good of _you_. I know if I had asked you to, you would have held on."

"I'm not certain that I could have," Nevek said.

"Look," Geordi said. "I'm not going to put any ... irrelevant personal matters into my official report."

"And nor am I, believe me."

"But ... What was it you said? People make arrangements. We had an arrangement. A pretty good one, in the end, if you ask me." He laughed. "It doesn't need to be any more than that." Then added quietly, "Unless you want it to be."

Nevek turned to him, his eyebrows raised. "Commander La-- Geordi," he corrected himself. "Then our 'arrangement' did mean something to you."

"I haven't felt anything that ... intense in a long time. And I'm not going to pretend it didn't do anything for me when you were right there. Just ... y'know, next time buy me a drink first."

Nevek looked at him and smiled.

The captain's voice over the comm brought them back to reality, the reality in which the chances of there being a next time seemed very low indeed.

"Picard to La Forge," he said. "The Terix has arrived. Are you gentlemen ready?"

"Almost, Captain," Geordi said, suppressing a sigh.

"I will have to return to the Terix to extract the quantum singularity. It is a delicate operation."

"Moving a micro black hole around sounds like it would be, yes," Geordi said.

"If I do not see you again--"

But Geordi was already there, and kissing him.

The captain's voice came again over the comm. "Commander La Forge, please escort Centurion Nevek to the conference room at your earliest convenience."

Geordi broke off reluctantly. "Understood, captain." Then he tapped his combadge again. "The real conference room, or the holodeck conference room?"

"Deck One, Commander," Picard said. "I think it's time to put an end to all this cloak and dagger nonsense, don't you?"

* * *

Geordi sat down in Ten Forward, looking out at the stars.

There was just empty space ahead of them now: according to everything they could determine, the plan had been entirely successful. Dramatic, but successful. The Romulan torpedo, had made it close enough to the location of the extra-universal aliens' craft-cum-home-cum-selves, and released the singularity it was equipped with into space. Then the Enterprise had poured every last iota of the warp core's energy through the main deflector to enlarge it. Just a few moments later, the strange object, that they could not even detect directly, seemed to disappear, its cross-universal engine, that might have been a member of its crew, presumably becoming unjammed.

In the distance, FGC 47 seemed to glisten, promising a different kind of mystery, hopefully a less threatening one. But all the stars seemed a little brighter. There was no way the disappearance of the entropic field should have made a difference, so perhaps it was just the repairs Data had helped him make to the VISOR.

Someone came and stood next to him. Even before he looked, he knew it was Nevek. Captain Picard and Tomalak had agreed to a limited amount of social interaction for the crews beyond the three who had already come on board, in the name of celebrating a successful collaboration; Worf, convinced that the Romulans' only possible motivation was intelligence gathering, had heavily restricted which areas of the ship they were permitted to visit, and was personally shadowing Toras everywhere she went. Even Nevek and Tomalak had had their bridge privileges restricted.

Nevek was carrying two glasses.

"You bought me a drink," Geordi said.

"Your bartender was unwilling to allow me to exchange monetary tokens, or even to barter," Nevek said. "So I am not sure that is strictly true."

"Yeah, we don't really do money," Geordi said. "It's more a figure of speech. I wouldn't worry about it." He felt his heart skip a beat at the possibility that Nevek was trying to initiate what he seemed to be trying to initiate.

Nevek sat down and pushed the glass across to Geordi. "It transpired that she had a supply of _kali-fal_. Have you ever tried it?"

Geordi looked at the glass. Even with his full-spectrum perception, the colour of Romulan ale was very distinctive. "On occasion," he said.

"I have to admit to some confusion," Nevek said lightly. Too lightly. "I was given to believe that it was banned in the Federation."

"Oh, it is," Geordi said. "But no one likes to ask Guinan too many questions."

"Your people are very confusing," Nevek said. "Even here, on the flagship of the Federation fleet, open disobedience is tolerated. One could almost get the impression ... encouraged."

Geordi turned to look at him properly. His cheeks were flush in infrared, and the things he was saying, about not following the rules ... "Nevek, do you remember ... what I _thought_ you were trying to tell me, back in the shuttle?"

Nevek was silent.

"Is that what you're trying to say now? Because Captain Picard will--" Geordi caught himself, unwilling to make promises on the captain's behalf, even in these circumstances. "Federation policy is--"

"I am a loyal subject of the Romulan Star Empire," Nevek said stiffly. "I thought I had made that clear." Then he softened. "But the _official_ policy of the Empire is peace, and both our commanders have hailed our mission as a successful example of co-operation."

"So what happens now?"

"Who knows?" Nevek said. He shrugged, an unguarded gesture Geordi had never seen from him before. "Look at where I am, after all. I would not have believed a week ago, as we followed the Federation flagship under cloak, that I would be drinking on board it with my new ... friend, the chief engineer."

"What are you saying?" Geordi asked.

"I'm saying drink your drink, Commander La Forge. And let us toast, to peace, and the possibility of a reunion some time in the future."

Geordi raised his glass and chinked it against Nevek's. "I'll drink to that."

The Romulan ale was warm in his mouth, like the memory of Nevek's lips on his. As it always did, the drink had a hell of a kick; Geordi nearly gagged before he managed to swallow it down.

Nevek drained his glass smoothly and put it down on the table. Geordi put his back with just a sip taken from it.

They sat together in silence, looking at the stars ahead.

After a while, Nevek, quietly and without fuss, put his hand into Geordi's own.

"Nevek--"

"I believe," said Nevek, "that I do not have to return to the Terix until the time that by your reckoning of time is '0200 hours'."

"Right," said Geordi, trying his hardest to stop himself from smiling.

"My understanding is that we are restricted to decks ten through twelve," Nevek said.

"Mostly recreation areas--" the holodecks were mostly on Deck Eleven "--and residential quarters," Geordi confirmed, now unable to stop the smile from breaking out on his face.

"And where are _your_ quarters?"

"Deck Twelve," Geordi said.

* * *

In the darkness of Geordi's quarters, their lovemaking was everything that their urgent encounter, crammed inside the torpedo, had not been: slow, gentle, reciprocal. They explored one another's bodies until they were both fully satiated, and then lay together in the tangled sheet. Geordi fell asleep with Nevek's arm wrapped around his chest.

He awoke to Nevek fidgeting nervously. "I must prepare to return--" he said when he realised Geordi was no longer sleeping.

"Computer, what's the time?" Geordi asked.

"Zero one hundred hours thirty four," the computer said.

"We still have time," Geordi said. "Lie here, just a little while longer."

Nevek fell back into the pillows. "Your furnishings are softer than ours," he said.

"I'm not surprised."

"I am glad that we-- That this-- That we have had the opportunity to have a more ... normal encounter," Nevek said. "In case we never see each other again."

"Oh, we will," Geordi said.

"You sound very certain."

"Think about what we just experienced, Nevek, think about what we just _did_." He gestured out of the wide windows that Nevek had been so dismissive of just a day or two ago. "How far is to Romulus from here?"

"Three dozen parsecs," Nevek said. "More or less."

"And how wide's the Neutral Zone? A couple of parsecs at most. We helped those aliens travel across entire _universes_ , Nevek," Geordi said. "They came here from somewhere unimaginably different, and we still managed to communicate, to make a _connection_. The idea that if we can do that, working together, our people can't do that across a line drawn on a map--" He shook his head. "One day, there will be a true peace, not just the absence of war. Maybe what happened today will be the catalyst, or maybe something else will happen. But when it does, I'll make sure I come and find you."

"I hope that our new friends will find themselves a home," Nevek said. Geordi knew it was as good an answer as he was going to get.

"I'm sure they will," Geordi said.

"As sure as you are that we will see each other again?"

"Yes," said Geordi simply.

"I must go," Nevek said.

"I know," Geordi said. He pulled Nevek to him for a final kiss. "I'll take you to the transporter room."

* * *

Chief Brossmer was on gamma shift. She was sending a steady stream of Romulans back to the Terix, in groups of two or three.

"Mind if we have the room, Chief?" Geordi said.

Brossmer gave him a look, just for a moment, and then ducked outside.

Geordi crossed to the console, while Nevek mounted the pad.

"Geordi--" Nevek began.

"We have a saying on Earth," Geordi said. "I don't know if it'll make much sense to you, though. 'Don't say goodbye, say _au revoir_ instead.'" He shrugged. "It's from French, another human language. Captain Picard's language, actually." He was babbling, he realised. " _Au revoir_ means 'until I see you again'. Roughly. It's--"

"I understand," Nevek said. "Until I see you again."

Slowly, Geordi energised the coils.

And, for now, Nevek was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> [Another link to the artwork](https://startrekreversebang.dreamwidth.org/file/24668.jpg), since it's the final scenes that it ties into most closely.


End file.
